Pious Words

It is common enough for religious leaders to attribute to gods the words of mere fallible mortals; and the present heir of St Peter has continued this divine tradition by attributing to Angela Merkel a quote from Vladimir Putin. The villain called for an end to the "irresponsible policy of imposing foreign values from abroad" and to the West's attempts to "build democracy in other countries according to foreign templates." Even coming from the Kremlin, such sentiments might have a little more credibility had the West ever attempted to "build democracy" according to any template whatever; which may explain the moral appeal of Putin's words for the divinely appointed head of a single-sex pseudo-mediaeval city state founded by Mussolini. His Holiness' own prescription for the Afghan Problem was "prayer, penance and fasting," which certainly ought to help as much as anything else he's done.